County Optimizes IT Costs, Gains Improved Support and Services for SAP and Database

“We seriously evaluate every taxpayer dollar we spend; optimizing costs is of paramount importance. When I learned about Rimini Street, I was intrigued by the opportunity to get better support than we had with SAP and also streamline our costs. Looking back, I’d make the switch sooner if I could.”

Bob LeekCIO, Multnomah County

Challenges

Multnomah County runs a highly customized version of SAP ECC 6.0 with Oracle databases. The county found SAP's vendor support inefficient and expensive. As Multnomah County planned its next-generation IT strategy, Bob Leek, deputy CIO for Multnomah County, began evaluating ways to gain more responsive service while also optimizing costs, including the cost of support and maintenance. Multnomah County, however, had stringent requirements. The county needed a support provider that was capable of supporting both the SAP ECC 6.0 implementation as well as its underlying Oracle databases to ensure seamless support for the entire SAP solution.

Rimini Street Solution

After looking at multiple competitors, Leek realized that Rimini Street was the unique provider capable of meeting the county's multifaceted needs. In addition to supporting customized code, Rimini Street's Primary Support Engineer (PSE) model, which ensures that a single point of contact is familiar with the county's business systems, stood out as a major benefit. "Our SAP implementation has over 1000 points of customization," Leek says. "Having a dedicated Primary Support Engineer at Rimini Street has been a real time saver for us-our PSE knows us personally and understands the complete context of our technology landscape and case history.

Client Results

Reduced support and maintenance spend: Multnomah County saved 50 percent of its previous SAP and Oracle database spend immediately upon switching to Rimini Street, while also gaining more responsive support service and a dedicated point of contact.

Received applicable state-specific tax, legal and regulatory updates: Rimini Street provides Multnomah County with tax, legal and regulatory updates at no extra cost, and assisted the county with critical Affordable Care Act reporting.

Gained strategic flexibility: Multnomah County can run its stable SAP and Oracle database environment as it builds out its long-term ERP strategy.